Pasquale Qualano

This volume seems pretty pointless. Do new incarnations of the Doctor need "roads" to them? What does that even mean? How can you set up a new incarnation of the Doctor? What it turns out to mean here is three standalone stories about the three previous incarnations of the Doctor, the three who had ongoings from Titan for the previous three years. So we get a tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy adventure; an eleventh Doctor and Alice adventure; and a twelfth Doctor and Bill adventure. Each is show more fine, but I found the reveals in the tenth Doctor one not very convincing (the monsters look cool but that's it) and the story in the eleventh Doctor one confusing. I don't even remember the twelfth Doctor one. Some Titan writers have done impressive single-issue adventures (mostly the writers on the Eleventh Doctor series), but these are not of them.

Each story is followed by a short back-up featuring the same Doctor, but by the creative team of the upcoming Thirteenth Doctor book and set during an episode of the tv show. In each case, the Doctor sees a hand coming through a time portal, and then does nothing about it, continuing about his business. Having already read the first volume of The Thirteenth Doctor as of this writing, it's pretty pointless set-up, and I don't entirely buy that the Doctor would just ignore each of these time portals and go about his business. Sure, we know it has nothing to do with the events of "The Girl in the Fireplace" or "The Power of Three" or whatever, but how does he? But I do like some Rachael Stott art.

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I thought this was going to be something slightly different than it was. Spinning out of the 2016 Christmas special, "The Return of the Doctor Mysterio" (the first issue came out literally the day after it aired), this sends the twelfth Doctor on an adventure with that story's superhero, the Ghost, and his wife and daughter. I thought it was going to be the ongoing superhero adventures of the Ghost, with the Doctor as a minor character maybe. Instead, it's a pretty standard set of Doctor Who show more adventures, but with the Ghost and his family as companions. There's no New York City superheroics here; instead, there's visits to the future and alien planets and Sycorax spacecraft to track down some cosmic thingummies

It's fine. I appreciated the focus on Grant's wife Lucy, who is the focal character much more than the Ghost, actually. But it's pretty bog-standard stuff, slightly enlivened by the novelty of having an entire family (including a daughter who is either eight or eleven) as a companion team.

But I feel like something funner could have been done. "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" was a pastiche of the Richard Donner Superman films, and it seems that a comic book version of the character could have been a superhero comic pastiche. I can imagine some fun stuff: give the Ghost a classic Siegel and Shuster social justice adventure, a wacky Mort Weisinger Silver Age tale, a John Byrne Man of Steel-era adventure, each with appropriate art. Heck, use the TARDIS to show him what he inspired in the 31st century for some Legion of Super-Heroes madness! I know damning a story for something for not doing something it didn't even aspire to do isn't the done thing in reviewing, but I really feel like this squandered the potential of a fun episode. As is often the case, Mann's Twelfth Doctor comics aren't as playful as the television run they are trying to emulate.

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Like Dinnick's previous The Twelfth Doctor: Time Trials volume, this one is an over-egged continuity pudding. Like in that volume, he starts with two things that do kind of go together: the Weeping Angels and the Heavenly Host (from "Voyage of the Damned") are both angelic villains. But also like The Wolves of Winter, it just keeps adding stuff, because then we have the Judoon, and then also Margaret Slitheen, and I'm not really sure why, as nothing really goes together, and everything is show more done short shrift. I found it all pretty dull.

On top of that, the artists seem to be phoning it in, down to using the bridge of Star Trek's USS Voyager, complete with a prominently displayed Intrepid-class MSD! Slapping a Photoshop filter on it just isn't enough, dudes.

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https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/time-trials-a-confusion-of-angels-by-richard-din...

This is pretty good fun. The Angels of the Heavenly Host come up against the Weeping Angels; the Judoon and Margaret Slitheen get involved; some nice character moments for the Doctor and Missy, and to a lesser extent Bill and Nardole. Does what it needs to do.